1. Gifts and commodities

Since Mauss (1923), anthropologists have had a clear-cut tool at their
disposal in the concept of ‘gifts’, one that stressed that although
gifts appear voluntary, disinterested and spontaneous, they are obligatory and
interested (Mauss 1967: 7, 1979). By contrast, Mauss’s distinction between
‘societies of the gift’ (clan-based societies) and ‘capitalist
societies’ (class-based societies) has posed many problems. Although the
studies of transactions in ‘societies of the gift’ have illuminated
many aspects of the symbolic and political importance of gifts, it has also
become evident that it is not clear how to apply these findings to the
understanding of contemporary industrial societies (Strathern 1982, Gregory 1982
Thomas 1992, Cheal 1988: 4).

The roots of what has come to be called the ‘gift and
commodities’ debate are to be found in Mauss’s idea that gifts
identify two types of social relations: commodity relations and gift relations.
Commodity relations, as found in capitalist-state societies, describe the
alienation and autonomy of individuals in their market transactions, and the
‘strict distinction’ between ‘things and persons’ during
exchange (Mauss 1925: 46, 47). Gift relations, in pre-capitalist societies,
describe the boundedness of people with others and things, created by the
transfer of a possession.

Now, in all these numerous societies, on many different levels of
civilisation, in the Maori legal system in particular, these exchanges and gifts
of objects that link the people involved, function on the basis of a common fund
of ideas: the object received as a gift, the received object in general,
engages, links magically, religiously, morally, juridically, the giver and the
receiver. Coming from one person, made or appropriated by him, being from him,
it gives him power over the other who accepts it. (Mauss 1925: 8)

For Mauss, clan-based and class-based societies were different because the
morality of generosity had been partially lost in class or capitalist societies
in their evolutionary process (Mauss 1925: 63-67). If he could show that
‘gift economies’ were not a ‘natural economy’ or a
utilitarian one as the neo-classical theories of his time argued, he would prove
that western societies could transcend their utilitarian economy to achieve a
moral solidarity (ibid.: 80).

In Mauss’s view, the problem with gifts and commodity economies was a
problem about objects, the production and exchange of such objects, and the
nature of contractual relations that subjects define through objects and
exchange. In another words, it was a problem of the different relationships
between people engaged in transactions. In societies of the gift, these
relationships take the form of what Mauss called ‘total prestation’
or ‘total contract’ (Mauss 1925: 188): every exchange embodies some
coefficient of sociability, and it is a means to create peace and bonds of trust
(cf. Harrison 1993: 6, Sahlins 1972: 183). In commodity economies every exchange
is fragmented at each instance of the exchange of objects, and things are
alienable (ibid.: 31). The problem of the alienability of gifts in capitalist
societies which Mauss had inherited from earlier works on Marx (1868) led Mauss
to investigate how it was that in a gift economy gifts were inalienable. With
the work of Malinowski (1923) Mauss found that the concept of Maori Hau, the
spirit of the donor in the gift, was the source of reciprocity in exchange.
Things were personified by the hau, enforcing a return of some kind. As
Josephides (1985) put it:

For Mauss the obligation to return gifts arose out of the powerful relation
between gift and donor, such that the recipient could not enjoy the fruit of the
gift without making a return to the donor (Josephides 1985: 107).

Reciprocity, though, created inequality (see Josephides 1985: 109-113).
Mauss concentrated on the fact that this inequality was of a different order
than the relations of alienation, dominance, and control in capitalist
societies. The crux of Mauss’s contrast between societies lay in the idea
that class societies have forgotten the theme of the ambiguity of the gift
(Mauss 1925: 66). The theme of the gift is Mauss’s most famous argument:
the gift is a form of self-deception. In gift societies domination is mostly
‘disguised’ (see Bourdieu 1997: 217, and Josephides 1985 on the
mystification of inequalities). Gifts, in the sense of presents, are a source
both of pleasure and of ‘poison’ (Mauss 1924: 28-31). As Mauss
argued, the root of the problem with gifts is that ‘society always pays
itself in the counterfeit coin of its dream’ (ibid.: 231 in Bordieu 1997).

In the 1950s and 1960s Anthropologists had come to see the gift-commodity
dichotomy as a useful analytical tool. With Polanyi (1957) and Sahlins (1972), a
theory of modes of exchange developed into what is known as the
‘substantivist’ theory of
economics.[18] Sahlins argued that reciprocity
is a ‘continuum’. It ranges from ‘pure gifts’ where
social proximity is intense, to negative reciprocity between actors that are not
close to each other (Sahlins 1972). It was thus that the idea of reciprocity as
‘economically rational’ was introduced, to account for the ideas and
practices in ‘primitive’ societies. Designed to explain the
different principles operating in production and distribution, it was opposed to
neo-classical concepts of the utility of exchange. However, by the late 1970s
the debate between the substantivist and the opposite formalist, or neo-classic,
approach had reached an impasse. The gap or similarity between gift economy and
commodity economy remained unclear.

In early 1980s the debate between gift and commodity economy re-emerged
with new intensity. Parry (1986) strongly argued against the importance of the
ideology of reciprocity emphasised by Sahlins and his predecessor
Lévi-Strauss (1949), insisting on the deficiency of Mauss’s ideas
of alienation between things and persons.[19]
By contrast, Gregory (1982), from a perspective of political economy, took the
Maussian model to its limits, stressing that the gift is antagonistic to the
commodity. Gregory argues that ‘what distinguishes commodity from gift
exchange is the conceptualisation of kinship as a method of consumption (ibid.:
212). Gift exchange creates relations between subjects exchanging aspects of
themselves, while commodity only creates relationships between the objects
exchanged. Strathern (1972), following Gregory, developed the theoretical
distinction that Melanesian transactions pertain to a gift economy that cannot
be accounted for in the West (1992: 5).[20] In
a commodity economy persons and things are reified (Jolly 1991: 45). In a gift
economy, persons and things are
‘personified’:[21] a process that
makes people’s relations visible (Strathern 1992: 189). Harrison (1990),
from another angle, considers that what it is exemplary of gift economies is
that they force us to look at a different conception of the gift: ‘certain
categories of ideas are treated as economic goods, not only standing in
meaningful and logical relations but in relations of value’ (Harrison
1990: 189). For these authors gift exchange in capitalist societies can not
account for these meaningful holistic experiences. Weiner (1992) sees the crux
of the difference in the paradox of ‘keeping-while-giving’ in a
social universe where some valuables are
inalienable.[22] Keane argues against these
views because in any form of exchange ‘people hold conflicting
interpretations as to what kind of transactions they are actually engaged
in’ (Keane 1995: 607). Looking at the transactions does not suffice for
our understanding of exchange.

At the heart of these meanings is the quasi-indissoluble relation between
gifts and the incapacity of the recipient to alienate the object from the giver.
However, the extent to which a gift can be alienated from men is not determined.
Josephides argues that the category of ‘gifts to man’ in Gregory
‘have to be alienated from women where domestic production is their
source’. Furthermore, the position of women is more central in the
production of objects that circulate as wealth items than Strathern or Gregory
acknowledge in their works (Josephides 1985: 206-209). Jolly also seems to argue
that the radical contrast between the two types of economies is an imagined
chasm, and that these realms are ‘discursive rather than the geography of
the real world’ (Jolly 1991: 46)

The extent to which the findings of Melanesian gift exchange theory can
illuminate gift giving within capitalist societies was the object of much debate
in Carrier (1992) and Cheal (1988). The position taken by these authors is that
the perspective of political economy taken by Gregory and Strathern
‘trivialise’ gift behaviour (Cheal 1988: 6). Their main contention
is that western societies have a large economic expenditure on gifts, which
should not be considered a ‘minor appendage to life in capitalist
societies’ (see also Bailey 1971 and Miller 1995). Moreover, Cheal claims,
gifts are alienable, and capitalist market transactions have not replaced gifts.
At the core of capitalist societies, gift exchange ‘has legal
characteristics which distinguish it from other forms of non-commodity
transactions’ (Cheal 1988: 11). The explanation of the importance of gifts
in the west is that gift exchange, by which he means redundant (unnecessary)
gifts, has increased in importance as family life has been broken up. They are
symbolic media ‘for managing the emotional aspects of relationships’
(ibid.: 16). Granted that gifts are important for managing emotional aspects, we
also have to be aware of what Thomas (1998) criticises: that anthropology has a
theoretical bias for ‘social relationships’ to the detriment of
‘the nature of things’ (see also Appadurai 1986: 19). This is
certainly a problem in the study of Japanese exchange, where the relational
aspect of exchange predominates over ‘the nature of things’. My
emphasis on the wrapping of commodities attempts to focus on how things are
transformed, and the nature of such objects (gifts) is mystified.

Strathern has pointed out that ‘the gift is more under attack than
the commodity’ (1993: 6). In western societies, the commodity certainly
appears to have more power of representation on its own. This is in relation to
what Carrier calls ‘possessions’. Carrier proposes an analytical
distinction between possession and commodity. He shows how certain goods are
personalised and manipulated in catalogue advertising to become a possession
(1990: 693). In contrast with the commodity, which can be alienated, the
possession, which identifies the attachment of persons to things, is
inalienable. Carrier (1990, 1992) suggests that market processes, by means of
cultural constructions such as catalogues, allow potential consumers to believe
they are switching from commodity exchange to a gift economy. One of the
characteristics of commodities is that they may be invested with the attributes
of gifts. Creighton (1994) proposes a similar idea in Japan for how children are
‘wrapped’ as consumers of market catalogues.

Carrier’s major criticism against the theories of the gift economy,
is that, following Cheal and Said, there is an ‘orientalist’
tendency in anthropological description to ‘characterise entire societies
in terms of distinctive forms of circulation: societies of the gift and
societies of the commodity’ (1997: viii). He argues that the West is
confronted with aspects of capitalist societies that can

not be reduced to capitalism; namely, sentimentality towards objects. The
west, both authors propose, is not only the land of economic rationality.
Carrier tries to arrive at a polite compromise about how to theorise gift
exchange: ‘society contains a capitalist-sphere, a sphere of Maussian
commodity exchange, existing together with a non-capitalist sphere, a sphere of
Maussian gift exchange’ (Carrier 1997: ix). However, as he mentions, these
dichotomies are simplification of ‘a muddier reality’ because gift
giving can not be reduced to the impact of capitalism
(ibid.).[23] In a section of the book rightly
entitled ‘oppositions in context’, Carrier establishes the crux of
the problem of gifts. In Mauss’s work, there is a tendency to reduce the
complexity of alien societies to a mirror image of the West, and to reduce the
complexity of Western societies to a mirror image of alien societies (ibid.:
201). The result is that the West and the alien societies are lost in a game of
reflections, a ‘wonderland’ of anthropological models. This
wonderland is perhaps the reason why Carrier sees that it is ‘too easy to
become beguiled by differences, it is hard to see similarities among different
types of societies, and hard to see differences within a single type’
(ibid.: 205).

The theories proposed by Carrier have a strong appeal but also contain
several flaws. They lack contextualization within power and inequality relations
between producers and transactors of gifts. He leaves it for the reader to
answer these questions (ibid.: x). The major problem with Carrier’s
theories is that they cannot easily be applied to the Japanese case. He seems to
argue that they do not apply because Japanese capitalism is different from
Western capitalism. I will argue in section three that the Japanese case has
much to contribute to Carrier’s theories of gifts and commodities, not
because of differences but because of similarities.

The issues of the relation between gifts and capitalism, and of the
usefulness of such concepts, are at the basis of my analysis. This is a
consequence of the location of Japanese gift exchange at the intersection of the
concern with ‘traditional gifts’ (Lebra 1967) and ‘change and
modernity’ (Smith 1979, Reischauer 1979, among others). This intersection
leaves little room for easy compromises. The 1960s-1970s models on Japanese
exchange must be revised in accordance with new critical work in the field of
economic anthropology, and economic anthropology should incorporate the case of
Japanese gift exchange into their pool of studies. Japanese society is clearly
an industrialised and capitalist society. Unlike Creighton 1991 and Carrier
1995, I do not perceive Japanese exchange as containing relations that
‘resemble’ those of the gift economy overlapping with those that
‘resemble’ the commodity economy. The economy of the society is
clearly a commodity economy, one that transforms commodities into gifts in order
to reproduce what Cheal calls ‘small intimate worlds’. Japanese
society sustains powerful representations about itself and a large confluence of
‘reflections’ and positioning in relations to ‘others’.
Any attempt to compare the similarities and differences with other
industrialised societies will to some extent involve representational problems
and reductions. However, Japanese society in 1995-97 is not at the intersection
between ‘traditional gifts’ and ‘capitalism’. From the
beginning of fieldwork, the villagers of Kamikatsu made many references to
gifts, commodities and possessions in contexts other than this classic
perspective of ‘tradition and change’. It became clear that their
actual perspectives and practices would be one of the central concerns of my
thesis.

[18] The substantivist debate is part of
the debate known as formalist/substantivist debate, which is an extension of an
earlier debate between neo-classic and political economy that lead Mauss to his
investigations. Formalism is a development of neo-classic economics, opposed to
substantivism. Substantivism argued that formalism could not account for the
process of production and distribution in non-capitalist societies, which would
operate in totally different principles. Substantivism takes a step further than
the positions of political economy held by Mauss. Capitalist societies are not
seen at the end of an evolution, but it is reciprocity in gift exchange, which
is placed along a continuum of closeness and remoteness with others. (see
Clammer 1978 for a contextualization in this
debate).[19] Parry argued that
anthropologist place too much emphasis on the ideology of reciprocity. Parry
claims that what is being addressed in Mauss theory of the gift is the
ideological model of a free-gift that ‘emerged in parallel with the
ideology of a purely interested exchange’. The ideology of a free-gift is
a product invention of highly differentiated societies with an advance division
of labour and a significant commercial sector’. According to Parry, Mauss
invented a non-existing dichotomy in the hau notion between gift and spirit,
person and thing (Parry 1985: 465). In Parry’ s Indian gift, asymmetry,
rather than reciprocity is the key issue of the problem in returning gifts. In
the Brahman theory of gift, things must be alienated and the
‘spirit’ of the gift must not return. According to Strathern the
problem behind reciprocity and the hau is that the real Melanesian thing is the
irrelevance of the dichotomy between spirit and thing. (Strathern 1992: 173).
However, Perry and Strathern have been equally criticised by doing what they
criticise in others. Parry’s model of the Indian gift, has been said to
reproduce the ‘ideology of Caste’ also found in Dumont disguised as
pragmatic rationalism (see Raheja 1988:30, Quigley 1993 for different critiques
on the ‘ideology of Caste’).
[20] Strathern model is of actors
exchanging social totalities, exchanging perspectives and views. The difference
between economies is complicated further through the ambiguities of discourse
about the ethnocentric perception Europeans have about obligation and market
(Gregory 1982, Thomas 1991).[21]In order to
draw this radical contrast, Strathern uses two arguments. First, that persons,
the body of persons is partible in feminine and masculine elements and it is the
body where people deal with debts, thus debt is personified - attached to the
human body. Second that a gift economy is based on the substitution of units,
which are personified parts and must be partible, rather than on a ration
between things. [22] Strathern has
criticised this view. Inalienability of things does not presuppose
inalienability of the actors. Further, suicide in Hagen, speak of a clear
alienation of person when they fail to adequate the tension created between kin
groups and their political organisation expressed with and by some means of
exchange. In the context of some of this means of exchange the roles of wife and
sisters and conceptualised and sanctioned depending on the efficiency in the
resolution of the levels of reciprocity between the kin groups (Strathern 1988:
283-284)[23] It is assumed that the
historical advent of industrial production discovered a new relation. In the
societies defined by the core of the supposedly impersonalisation of market
exchange, the category of the "commodity" seemed metaphorically, to substitute
what in non-market economies, the gift did not manage to reproduce. An
atomisation of individual choice and in Marx terms, alienation of the means of
production, and implementation of the alienation in the sphere of social
relations. However, Appadauri criticised that “modern economy, ostensibly
orientated towards utility and material needs is predicated on the existence of
a specific scheme of values and it is a system for the production not only of
things but of meaning” (quoted in Harrison 1993: 197).